Page 118 of Possession

Aris sighs. “After all I’ve done for you, he’s who you think of.”

“So, you don’t deny it?” I say.

He shakes his head, sucking his lips to the side, and another fissure cracks my heart. I didn’t know the hope I was holding out on until now, but there was some part of me praying that Henry was lying.

“He does not deserve this fire you hold,” Aris says with disapproval. “He used you. He never loved you.”

I shake my head. I can’t be hearing this right now; I won’t accept it. I won’t listen to it. “You’re lying,” I respond sharply.

“I’m not. He didn’t care; you were an object to him, something he used to placate me.”

Henry himself already said as much, but…

Aris stares and waits for me to process it, eyes dark and his stance active, ready to grab me at any second, and I realize that I don’t know him anymore, if I ever even did. I don’t know his plans or what he wants. He’s told me again and again that I will die only on his terms. Everything is on his terms now. And for the second time today, I consider that this might be it.

What cuts the deepest is that he’d be the one killing me, that he wants to kill me. It shouldn’t come as a surprise; I’ve always known what he was capable of. It’s just that I didn’t think that he was capable of doing it to me. My mind goes to us reading books together and telling stories into the night. A friendship—twisted and broken, to be sure—but one he has violated completely.

“What happened during that month I was gone?” I ask. Because that’s what I’m missing, isn’t it? That’s what changed everything.

“Henry and I made a deal.” Aris smiles openly, widely. “He just didn’t realize that he’d be getting the short end of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“When Henry watched us in our cell, he didn’t feel sympathy.” Here, Aris pauses, his grin slipping. When he speaks again, his composure is different. Before, he was smug, a bit harsh and insistent, but now his voice is oddly gentle. He watches me carefully as he says, “He didn’t see a poor, pretty girl the way that you wished he would. He saw an opportunity.”

But, if that’s true, then everything Henry said was a lie. From the very beginning.

“I don’t understand,” I say. I don’t know what else to say.

Henry saw an opportunity—an opportunity for what? What did he think he’d gain by putting Aris in himself? What did he see when he watched us for three years? If he didn’t want to help me, then what did he want?

“Ask me,” he says quietly. “Let me explain.”

I laugh, the sound choked and manic. Nothing is funny, but that’s what makes it funny. Everything is so absolutely wrecked that it’s ridiculous. Slapstick.

The thought makes me laugh again, and I shake my head. “So you can gloat?” I say.

“Not to gloat. I want to tell you.” He pauses again. “I’ve missed speaking with you.”

I refuse to acknowledge the last part, shrugging. He wants to tell me? Fine.

“The mages wanted to use me, but I refused. Henry thought that, if I was in him, that he could control me. Obviously, I anticipated this scheme beforehand and made preparations.”

He did it for the mages, the people who raised him, the ones who trapped me. He never disapproved of them—that was just another lie.

It makes sense, but I hate that. I want to find gaps in his story and exploit them to prove that none of it is true. But it just feels like I’m falling deeper and deeper

“How did you get out?” I ask after a moment.

“I was never trapped.” He smiles again, happy that I’m playing along. Eager to reveal the depth of his deception. “He just thought that I was. He tried to bind me, use me. I can’t use magic, Mary, but I still practically invented it. It wasn’t hard to outsmart him. I came and went as I pleased… visited you in your dreams. I never had to breach the wards; I was already inside of them.”

I digest this quietly.

“So Henry thought that you were stuck the whole time?” I say.

“Oh, yes.”

“Why go inside him at all?”

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